Life is like a Snurricane

So. You may have seen on the news that certain parts of the eastern United States – places that don’t usually get snow – are now blanketed in the stuff. As such, I am snowed in, and while I’d love to have you stop by for a chat and a drink, unless you already live in my neighborhood, I don’t think that’s a wise decision today. So pull up a chair in your own home and pour a beverage from your own reserves and imagine we’re together.

I will admit that I was a little put-off last weekend when they predicted a storm and then we got absolutely nothing (not even winds) but this time they got it absolutely right: we got walloped.

They predicted we would get 8-12 inches, and the official city report says we got 12.5. Our specific neighborhood had high winds with crazy drifts, so some parts only measured 6 inches while others parts measured 17 – and downtown where they usually measure water levels after a hurricane, they measured drifts of snow up to FOUR FEET HIGH.

Some folks have called it a Snowicane or a Flurricane, but “Snurricane” tickles all the right spots for me. Yes, it’s a completely made-up word, but aren’t all words “made up” when you get down to it?

My work has already preemptively closed the next two days, and I’ll try to use those days to allow myself to relax (while also doing some remote work). It’s almost like something is saying:

you’ve been doing so much and thinking so much that you need to slow down or you’ll get burned out.

Well. Let’s back up. Last week I just couldn’t bring myself to write a blog post because of the state of everything. And while everything is still pretty bad, I am also in a mental state to actually function, so that something . . .

Two weeks ago was my wife’s birthday, which also coincides with Dolly Parton’s birthday and this year fell on MLK day – the last of which meant that I had off work and so we could spend it together.

It started off with a doctor’s appointment (which we then joked that we were now officially the old couple that does that kind of thing) and then we went and did a little bit of shopping and out to lunch. I found some graphic novels and a new My Chemical Romance shirt, as well as a lavender-scented air freshener, and we got matching bracelets. Well, almost matching. Mine says “weirdo 1” with a black cat and Krystal’s says “weirdo 2” with a white cat.

Lunch for me was a philly cheesesteak.

Both of the last two Wednesdays we played D&D and last Sunday we returned to the world of Cyberpunk: RED. While I’ve typed up the notes for Leaf, I haven’t yet got caught up with Rustle or K2 – but go ahead a click through anyway because the stories are still good! I plan to have them updated by this Wednesday and our next session with our characters in the Feywild.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve also made a few dishes like soup and fettucini Alfredo and tuna sandwiches or stroopwafel with my coffee or spaghetti with meat sauce and a side salad, while other nights I just wanted something easy and got some McDonalds.

Now if you looked at one of those photos and wondered if I was trying to warm a stroopwafel over a tea light, you are correct. It’s technically the setup for a wax warmer thing, and it worked well enough. It’s not like the power went out or anything, I just wanted to see if it would work – and in a pinch, it will.

It was serendipitous that on the very day I was making soup I discovered a poem posted to the social media account “ExistennialMemes”

A poem about Soup in the winter

Soup is very comforting
So warm and nourishing
Especially while this land
Is so covered in all this ice
So cold and so cruel
But so weak to Warmth
It's nice to make Soup for my Family

I was still feeling kinda bleh a the start of last week and took a mental health day on Tuesday. It just so happened that after I had my time approved, we were given a delay due to extreme cold. So I got a 9-hour mental health day for 7 hours of PTO.

I listened to podcasts and did some light cleaning and went through three years of Food and Wine to save recipes I wanted. I also went to Walmart to get new dish scrubbers and got hit with a cart in my lower back while I was getting said scrubbers, which made me want to go home rather than continue shopping and so that’s exactly what I did. But I also got a mini toolbox with some birthday money my mom had sent me and decided I needed to fill it with essentials.

Unfortunately, someone decided they were going to knock the ice on our outside package delivery box and knocked a hole straight through the lid.

In fairness, the box probably needed replacing, but also: don’t mess with things that aren’t yours!

Last week my brother Charlie also showed my that my nephew Andrew had taken the updated design of our coat of arms and had a wax seal made from it. So from the 1563 confirmation to the 2020 redesign by ModernGoldfish to the 2026 wax seal, I think it’s safe to say it’s all come full circle.

Of course the big news this week was the predicted snowstorm. We did our planning well enough, I think, though I did forget to get a shovel before they all sold out, and I didn’t have nearly as many eggs as I thought I had. On Thursday night one of our friends asked to borrow cumin and chili powder, and that inspired me to write this piece.

Things shut down beginning Friday night and my brother Leroy called Saturday morning to see how things were doing and we talked about how folks tend to eat their storm snacks before the storm actually arrives, and the more I think of it the more I think it’s something tapped into our history – something that says

a storm is coming and you have food and nowhere to go and to survive you’ve got to eat . . . so eat!

There’s something there, some spark I can fan and tend and flame – but not now.

And then Saturday morning the snow started and once it got going it didn’t really stop. This morning I went out walking the neighborhood with my friend (they brought cinnamon rolls!) and talked and observed things and took various measurements – as I said before, the official city total was 12.5, but I’ve talked to folks that got less or more and no matter the amount because we simply do not have the equipment or infrastructure to deal with snow we are going to be under this and at home for a couple days at least . . . and then they say we may get another storm bringing a wintry mix on Thursday!